by Alan Carr
I’ll interrupt the dialogue for just a second there – do you like a bargain? Ahh, now you’re interested. Lean in, I have something to tell you. Comedians don’t just start a tour, bang, when it says so on their tour poster, oh no, they need to work it all out on stage, hone it, sculpt it, find all the funny bits that will eventually (hopefully) be manipulated into a comedy routine – and if you are savvy and quick enough, sometimes you can get to see a comedian warts and all, up close and personal, sweating in a tiny little arts centre for maybe as little as a tenner. I’ve seen some of my favourite comedians do this. I was once in an audience and Harry Hill popped up to try out ten minutes. Sometimes it’s nicer to see a ‘work in progress’ night when it’s a bit rough round the edges because not only are you getting a good night out but you are also supporting your local arts centre and community spaces – so next time you see ‘See Alan Carr Live at Tring Working Men’s Club – £5’, don’t sneer ‘Oh, look how the mighty have fallen’, say ‘Ooh, I might give it a go.’
Anyway, I digress. There I am, it’s the first night of my Yap Yap Yap tour and I go on stage, it’s going well, laughs in all the right places, then all of a sudden, oh my God, I’m wetting myself. I can feel it. It’s coming out. I blurt something at the audience – I can’t remember what, I was too busy clenching my urethra shut – and run for the Playhouse toilets. In fourteen years of stand-up this had never happened before. I went back on stage and continued the show and didn’t think too much about it. In the car on the way home I blamed first-night nerves and the urn full of Yorkshire tea that I will drink throughout the day even if by 4.00 p.m. I am shaking like a shitting dog. I love my tea and, believe it or not, Jägerbombs and tequila are not my favourite drink – oh no, it’s the good old-fashioned cuppa that floats my boat, and as the monkey in the beret said, pushing the piano up the hill, ‘It’s the Taste!’
The next evening I go to step on stage, buoyed up by the night before’s reception, chomping at the bit. I step out and there it is – the sensation. I need a wee so bad I can neither explain it nor contain it; my bladder is not a bladder any more but a box of wine with a faulty nozzle – drip, drip, drip, oh no, it’s flowing down my leg, is that a puddle I see before me? Help! Of course it wasn’t and, like the previous night, when I finally got to the toilet I couldn’t go. Obviously, dear reader, you don’t want to hear about the goings-on of my bladder and I wouldn’t even have included it in this book if it hadn’t affected me so badly. For me, the sensation became The Sensation. Every public performance, every episode of Chatty Man, even something as uplifting and joyous as walking one of my best friends down the aisle, The Sensation would be there. The little blip on 1 February 2015 in Weston-super-Mare had become a daily, all-encompassing nightmare.
By March, The Sensation had become a fully fledged panic attack. I had palpitations, I was vomiting, the fear of going on stage would be so intense that it would literally grip me. All this at the beginning of a 200-date comedy tour – Really body, really?! This is going to ruin my life, I thought, and it did.
Listen, I’m sure a few of you are tittering away at the idea of me cross-legged on stage trying NOT to think of waterfalls and dripping taps and yes, I get that there is something intrinsically comic about your waterworks – I still giggle about Gangi Bhabuta wetting herself over the packed lunch boxes when she did an ill-advised cartwheel at middle school – but it was genuinely awful trying to suppress this wave of discomfort while my mind was telling me that every laugh I was getting on stage was due to a massive growing piss stain on my crotch. I started turning down work because the fear was too much – I couldn’t handle it. I was even turning down birthday invitations and friends couldn’t understand why. Little did they know and how could I tell them something so embarrassing? I’m not coming because I don’t want to rain on your parade – well, it’s more piss on your parquet but you get the gist.
There is a part in the stage show when I ask the audience what food they consider ‘sexy’, what kind of food turns them on. Well, one man in Coventry said ‘trifle’ and I felt a pang in my undercarriage (can your penis snap?). I felt the floodgates (literally) open – oh no, I’m wetting myself! – and I grabbed my crotch. ‘Oh, does it turn you on as well!’ I said. Well, the audience burst out laughing. I had to do something, I was becoming a wreck. Enough is enough, I finally told my private parts, and I rang up my doctor in tears. ‘There are some wonderfully discreet adult nappies available on the high street,’ came the voice down the line.
‘Whoa whoa whoa, I’m not actually pissing myself! It’s the sensation!’ I shouted back. Well, the last sentence was a bit hushed – a woman in the next aisle had looked up. That was the biggest irony: if I was wetting myself on stage I would just buy nappies – hey ho, pop them on, piss away, and if anyone asked why my nether regions were getting wider and wider during my act I could just blame it on feminine bloating. Done – problem solved. But it was more than that.
The doctor put me on to a urologist who spent a whole afternoon testing my bladder, kidneys, liver – in fact, any internal organ was tested that might have unloaded this misery on to me. Whilst we waited for the results I went into a little anteroom and spoke to the nurse. With head tilted to one side, she proclaimed, ‘You know, there are some wonderfully discreet adult nappies available on the high stree—’
‘I’m not pissing myself – oh, I give up.’
She then went on to tell me that she had a patient who was fine all day until she arrived home and stuck the key in the lock, whereupon she instantly had an uncontrollable urge to urinate. Well, it’s all right for her, I protested, she can pop her ‘Welcome’ mat into the washing machine – what do I do? I can’t stand on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo with a mop.
Meanwhile the results had come back – I closed my eyes and prayed for the best. Nothing wrong, tip top, perfection, impeccable, sublime, in fact the doctor said that you could eat your dinner off my prostate – well, he didn’t, but you could tell he was thinking it.
Woohoo, I thought, nothing wrong – get in, my son! But then it dawned on me that if the problem wasn’t downstairs, that meant there was something wrong upstairs. Oh dear – that prospect actually filled me with doom. Understanding the cause and effect of anxiety was like nailing jelly to the wall. Where do you even begin? Well, I tried everything. I didn’t drink liquids after noon – apologies to people who saw my Yap Yap Yap shows in March through to April, I wasn’t drinking water and that’s why my lips stuck to my gums and my tongue kept flicking out and licking my eyeballs like a lizard! I tried more therapeutic paths of enquiry, including meditation, healing and Reiki. I even tried ‘cupping’, but my genitals kept falling out. Okay, the last one was a joke but you get the gist – I tried everything. One bloke believed that it was anxiety creating a ball in my stomach that needed to be ‘broken down’. Already totally upset and feeling ill at ease, I sat on his couch.
‘I’m just going to massage your colon,’ he said, pulling the blinds down.
‘You are not massaging my colon,’ I said, pulling the blinds UP. ‘No way, love.’ I made a swift exit.
The only therapy I did not flirt with was hypnosis. I’ve always been wary of it. I know for a fact it works and I’ve seen people ‘go under’, but I wouldn’t go near it with a shitty stick. It’s the staring-in-the-eyes part that gets me – let’s just say I will not be skyping David Blaine anytime soon. I just didn’t want hypnosis to start effing with my head. You never really know the long-term effects, do you? I would just worry that in years to come I might hear the opening bars of the ‘Birdie Song’ and start taking my clothes off or doing the funky chicken.
In my time off the stage, mainly while writing this, I am hoping that The Sensation relents and the anxiety goes. Maybe the break will not only nourish me mentally but physically too. I’ve always been an anxious, nervy person, always, and it has manifested itself in all kinds of ways throughout my life causing a relentless relay race of health miser
y. Migraines in the playground and through university, and psoriasis all through my twenties and early thirties until recently when the baton has been squarely passed on to IBS. I know, the number of times on Chatty Man I’ve joked about having it and then I get it, which just goes to show you should be careful what you wish for. Nausea, vomiting, bloating, distended abdomen and the worst wind ever.
All my blood tests came back fine as I knew they would – it was bloody stress, which wasn’t helped by the doctor’s next suggestion: ‘We are going to have to perform a colonoscopy’ – a camera stuck up your jacksie. Now I was getting really anxious and my mind was whizzing. The cameras on Chatty Man were huge and sometimes they had to be assisted by a man carrying a cable – surely it couldn’t be one of those that got shoved in? Of course, because of my sexuality people assume I will have no problem with things being thrust up me from behind. As if I’m going to be bent over a table and turn to give the doctor a cheeky wink as he pushes it in – please!!
Why does my body hate me? Even sleep failed to provide any relief – I started getting night terrors. Well, I must ask you – have you ever had a night terror? Just imagine having the scariest dream possible but you are wide awake and you’re being sat on by a fat person. My first night terror was, er, terrifying – I was lying in bed, fine and dandy, trying to sleep; I’d just placed my Puzzler on the bedside table and closed my weary eyes, blissfully unaware of the Nightmare on Elm Street scenario that would soon unfold. Suddenly my eyes were drawn to the landing where the light had come on. Strange, I thought, it was only me in the house, Paul was out with friends. Oh my God, it must be a … I would have screamed but I was frozen, nothing could move, I found myself totally paralysed. My mouth wouldn’t even open to let out a whimper. The door slowly opened and this ‘thing’ – for I do know not what it was or how to describe it – this thing came in through the door, circled my bed, then leant in and came about a foot from my face, staring at me with these cold eyes. No part of me could move. I managed to utter through a clamped-shut jaw, ‘What are you?’ and then it pulled back, circled round the bed and out of the door, and with the flick of the landing light going off, I woke. Even though at last I felt I could move, I daren’t, just in case this ‘thing’ came back. It was the oddest experience I’d ever had and it really shitted me up – those dreams of walking naked around a shopping centre were small fry compared to this!
If anxiety isn’t putting the willies up me whilst I’m alone in my bedroom, it’s always there manifesting itself in all kinds of ways and more often than not at the most inopportune moments. For example, I was covered in psoriasis on the day of my Tooth Fairy DVD cover shoot – the poor make-up artist, Sue, was at one point contemplating paintballing Touche Éclat at my face and hoping for the best – seriously, my skin had the consistency of flaky pastry.
Maybe all I need is a rest, a chance for my body to reboot, but I am disappointed in it. At the time of writing my body and I are now estranged and I only see it at the weekends. After the year I’ve had, I have so much sympathy for anyone who suffers with anxiety attacks and its crippling side effects; I feel your pain, brothers and sisters. And if anyone comes up to me in the street and tells me they’ve endured the same bladder complaint as I have, I will take them to one side and say to them from the bottom of my heart, ‘There are some wonderfully discreet adult nappies available on the high street.’
I wasn’t the only one in 2015 having a tough time. Paul was having a very personal battle of his own that year and it all began with a pair of stilettos, an oversized bra and a couple of condoms.
Adele was having a birthday party (does anyone have a Hungry Hoover, I seem to have dropped a name?) and the theme of the partay was ‘Come As Your Hero’. Adele always throws a good party and everyone puts in an effort, so when we saw what the theme was, me and Paul decided to have a really good think. If you’re going to dress up you should pull out all the stops – no sticking a sheet over your head and turning up as Casper the Lonely Ghost, you need to put the work in. My heroes are Wonder Woman and Prince so it was a tough call. Both had their positives and negatives. Wonder Woman would make more of an impact and yet red strapless corsets are so unforgiving on me and as for the star-spangled shorts – forget it, I’m a classic pear. So Prince it was. I decided to go for the Purple Rain era – classic Prince – rather than the bumless trouser look of ‘Gett Off’. I rang up Angels, the costume hire company, asked for the said outfit and had it delivered to the Chatty Man offices. I slipped my trotters into the shiny purple pixie boots, squeezed into the purple sequined trousers, the ruffled shirt, the tousled black wig, and drew on the pencil moustache – ta dah, I thought as I stepped out on to the office floor. ‘Ooh, Charles the Second,’ said the receptionist as she passed by with a handful of files. Maybe it needed a bit more work.
My fancy-dress dilemma was nothing compared to the monstrosity that met my eyes when I walked through the door at home. Paul was in high-heeled boots, a pencil skirt, a plunging V-neck, a perm so tight it squeaked and a bra wedged with water-filled Durex. ‘Who are you supposed to be?’
‘My mum,’ came the reply.
‘Your mum isn’t Jeremy Clarkson!’ She really isn’t. His mother was his hero, which I thought was unbelievably sweet, but little did he know that it would be his downfall. Oh, how everyone at the party laughed when he turned up swinging his massive breasts, swinging them left, swinging them right, swinging them in opposite directions. Wasn’t it funny as he was slut-dropping in his heels and body-popping, throwing his humungous breasts here and there.
A great night was had by all. Adele turned up as George Michael – I mean dressed as him, she didn’t drive through the wall with a steering wheel round her neck. Paul and I laughed all the way back home in the taxi. What a party! What a scream! What the fuck are you doing writhing around on the bedroom floor, panting and yelling for painkillers? All of a sudden Paul was in complete agony and we needed to get him to a doctor, A&E, anything. He was contorting himself into these animalistic shapes and crying – it was awful to watch. I decided to take him to A&E, well, once I’d got him out of the women’s clothes. And I had de-Princed. Knowing my luck, they’d be filming an episode of 24 hours in A&E and the last thing you want is: ‘It’s 2.05 a.m. and Prince has just wheeled in a screaming Jeremy Clarkson.’ Anyway, to cut a long story short, while he was necking shots and slut-dropping at Adele’s party, waving his tits around like an out-of-control swingball, all the vertebrae in his back had been yanked out and it was only when the alcohol had worn off and the breasts had come to a standstill that we realized he had done something absolutely devastating to his back.
Those first weeks when he was bed-bound I had to do everything for him, and I mean everything. Overnight, I had to take on the role of carer – God, it was boring. You like to think that when a loved one is in pain and is reliant on your help there is a pit of emotion dormant inside of you that will awaken, and you’ll plunge into it and it will give you limitless patience and empathy. Well, sadly for me that pit had been filled in. The novelty of bringing up bowls of soup on a tray soon wore off and when the pitiful voice fluttered down the stairs – ‘I need to go to the toilet, can you please help me?’ – especially if it was during one of my favourite shows, I would turn into Kathy Bates in Misery – ‘What now?! What more do you want from me?! You’re loving this, you cockadoodee!’ stomping unenthusiastically up the stairs. That was when I started crushing Nytol into his food. I’m not proud of this but he was in so much pain I thought it was for the best, for him and me. Only with sleep would healing come, I told myself, as I ground the tablets into his soup. How could I wash him and nurse him on zero hours’ sleep? Every time he moved, bless him, a spike of pain would shoot through his body. I wasn’t prepared for this and, quite frankly, I didn’t need it – I was on stage every night, stopping myself from having a piss, and here was my partner taking the piss.
The worst thing of all was that due to the huge scale of the
tour and the chat show – which had now been extended to seventeen weeks – I had to leave him for the West Country leg of the tour. It broke my heart, and I still feel the guilt now. There never is a brilliant time for back pain but the timing that year was exquisite; he was lying on the sofa screaming and I was pottering around a gift shop in Taunton trying to kill twelve hours till I could get home to look after him. Thank God for his friends, who really helped out – I owe them so much.
I came back from the tour to find Paul recumbent on the sofa, lying on a nest of Chats and Bellas, looking as you’d expect – bloody awful.
‘Alan, does my leg look all right to you?’ he muttered pitifully.
I looked casually down. ‘I can’t see your leg, it’s covered by a thick mottled purple support stocking. Whoa! That is your leg!’ His leg was not only twice the size but it looked like he’d stuffed a couple of morbidly obese Ribena berries down a pop sock.
‘We need to get you to a doctor!’ I surmised quickly and as it happened correctly for as we bounded in to A&E the doctor did a carbon copy of my first reaction – a kind of ‘Whoa!’ – and he diagnosed that Paul had developed deep-vein thrombosis from not being able to move around. We had got there just in the nick of time.
Sadly, it wasn’t our last visit to A&E that summer. Paul and the dogs had decided to join me while I was in Bournemouth on my tour. (It’s always hard finding good dog-friendly hotels and more often than not once my dogs have stayed there – stealing Cumberland sausages off of breakfast plates and jumping enthusiastically and unwashed on to the duvet – the hotels aren’t always dog friendly when we leave.) After complaining of not feeling well and of a tightness across the chest, during the night Paul suffered a pulmonary embolism and yet again, frantic, we rushed to A&E. (Do hospitals do loyalty cards? The amount of times I was there in 2015, I deserve a complimentary bed bath or something.) Anyone who has had a loved one in hospital knows that the A&E ward is one of the most unsettling places ever, and it’s even more unsettling on a Friday or Saturday night when not only do you have the fear that this could be your loved one’s last moments but you have to share those last moments with pissheads covered in blood slumped in wheelchairs and ravers shaking off the effects of hippy crack. It was all very tense.